Legal battle to ban Latham show fails

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Mark Latham's explosive critique of the Labor Party snowballed
last night into an extraordinary series of court battles between
media groups over the right to tell his story first.

News Ltd, publisher of the Herald Sun and The
Australian, was initially granted an injunction to stop Andrew
Denton's Enough Rope interview being shown four nights
ahead of schedule - but within hours that was dissolved and the
program was rushed to air.

A separate action was being fought in the NSW Supreme Court over
whether the ABC's Lateline could be allowed to air its
interview. Lateline won the right to do so, throwing ABC
management into confusion about which interview should be put to
air first.

Earlier the Enough Rope program circulated a partial
transcript of the interview in which Mr Latham told Denton that the
language Labor people used to talk about each other and the party
made "me look like an altar boy".

News Ltd bought the rights to serialise The Latham
Diaries in The Australian from tomorrow for a
reported $80,000, but the ABC brought forward its interviews after
News Ltd papers jumped the gun with reports of the book's contents
yesterday.

Labor yesterday was reeling under the breadth and depth of the
vitriol in the book and interviews with the former leader.

Leader Kim Beazley accused Mr Latham of lying and left open the
option of suing him.

Mr Latham took further his vicious onslaught on Mr Beazley in
the TV interviews, calling him a dirty dog and declaring: "I
wouldn't make him a toilet cleaner in Parliament House, let alone
leader of the Opposition."

He also admitted he had set up frontbencher Kevin Rudd in a
"sting" - leaking him false information about Labor Party polling
that then appeared in journalist Laurie Oakes' column.

With the party rallying behind its current leader against its
former one, Mr Beazley said: "If there were gold medals for biting
the hand that feeds you, Mark Latham would be standing on the top
of the dais."

Mr Latham has described Mr Beazley as "one of the most indecent
politicians I have come across" and said Mr Beazley smeared him for
six years by spreading sexual innuendoes.

His former colleagues were torn between trying to maintain
dignified silence and hitting back at slurs, which have included
calling caucus members snakes and sewer rats.

Backbencher Bob McMullan, forced off the front bench by Mr
Latham, said: "When someone looks through a window and thinks they
see a lot of vipers and snakes, it's nearly always the case they're
looking in a mirror and seeing a reflection."

Mr Latham has described Mr Rudd as a "terrible piece of work"
with a heroin-like addiction to the media, and revealed he would
have demoted him if Labor had won government.

He said last night that Mr Rudd had pledged "on his mother's
grave, this wonderful loyalty to me while other caucus members are
telling me that he's putting the spear in".

Mr Rudd, who is in New York, said Mr Latham had "a big problem
with the truth". "The stuff he went on about my mother's death
(which occurred just before the election) is just beyond the
pale."

Mr Beazley said he had not intended to comment because the party
had moved on. "But the sight of a former Labor leader erratically
turning on his party is, frankly, a bridge too far."

Expanding his attack on Mr Beazley last night, Mr Latham said:
"He's got away over the years with this image, this facade, he's Mr
Decency... everyone knows for a fact, that he's surrounded by the
worst elements of extreme politics in the Labor party."

He suggested Mr Beazley got into dirty politics "like a rat up a
drainpipe".

In Parliament, Peter Costello tried to blunt Labor's bid to
distance itself from Mr Latham, producing a glowing endorsement
from Mr Beazley during last year's election campaign telling voters
that "Mark Latham is ready to become prime minister". Health
Minister Tony Abbott needled the Opposition: "There are still
people opposite who would always prefer mad Mark to cowardly Kim."
Labor demanded he withdraw the pejorative comment about Mr Latham's
mental state.

Discipline held across most of the Labor caucus, with
backbenchers saying they found the attacks merely "sad" and
"disappointing". But Senator Steve Hutchins said: "I've always
thought he was a sleaze and he's proven he is."